Take a picture, it will last longer.

This week I chose to look at a few celebrities in particular and their use of online forums to post photographs. Mainly looking at Instagram and Twitter and how these are used to post, share and update followers and fans on the lives of the rich and famous.

What better way to peer into the depths of the social media sites than using a #hashtag. Of course, finding the right tag is always difficult but lucky that the modern day celebrity is a hashtag expert.

For this task I chose to look at Psy’s Instagram account (As chris mentioned in the lecture) and Lucy Liu’s twitter account.

Both are well known and have a reasonably active presence on the sites.

My experience of looking through these photos was certainly interesting. It told a bigger story than 140 characters and gave an insight into their lives that you can’t achieve through text alone. I think that age old “a picture is worth 1000 words” certainly comes into play here. I found myself becoming more engaged in the photos as it was quick, easy and usually easy to understand the context.

On the flip side it also opens up a world of opportunity in regard to advertisement and product placement. From the beauty blogger posting the perfect “flat lay” with the carefully placed coffee cup in the background or the xbox controller of the popular boy and lead singer. It often include connections to other celebrities. As Chris pointed out in the lecture with Psy and his many photos with celebrities, perhaps to legitimise and gain cultural capital. I found myself overly critical when I thought any type of advertisement was taking place. Critical of the company AS WELL as the celebrity.

Photos are an interesting look into celebrity culture and appear to be a great way for celebrities to engage with their fans. A quick and unofficial bit of independent research highlighted that photos seemed to be more popular on Twitter (In regards to favourites and retweets) than tweets that just involved text. I, of course won’t provide any of my data as it’s rough and was a scribbled tally on the corner of my workbook, but I think it’s the beginning of an interesting idea developing.

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2 comments

It’s funny, when I saw that you had looked at Lucy Lui, a thought popped into my mind, as I had also considered looking at her presence in the media. The thought was that there are not a lot of Asian celebrities that we are actively aware of that live in Asia.

I found this weeks question rather difficult to get my head around, due to my lack of knowledge of Asian celebrities. I found it interesting that you were annoyed by the product placement! I completely agree with you because as the audience, we start to question whether the image is authentic or if it is staged. So therefore, do we get a genuine look at their lives or is it a structured, false version of it?

I also like that you have observed that images on twitter are more commonly retweeted than those tweets without!

Hi Lauren,
I really enjoyed your post! I liked that you didn’t go for the typical Asian celebrity, like I did. Lucy Liu sounds like such a great celebrity to look at as she would have cultural influence from her Asian background and her American background.
It’s also interesting to see celebrities use their social media accounts for product endorsements. It makes you think how authentic their social media use is. It brings up the question of do they have these accounts to connect with their fans or just to make more money? And also whether or not they care about their fans?
Now that you haven’t roomed this I am probably going to be analysing my Instagram newsfeed haha